The World: Latest Stories

It’s illegal. It’s also deadly. But at graduations, birthdays, weddings, funerals — even when a politician just speaks on TV — firing guns into the air is a favorite way to celebrate.

Milad Khawam, a Syrian refugee in Berlin, describes his music as a "schizophrenia of feelings." It's the mix of emotions, he says, of someone who has left everything behind and is starting over.

After two and a half millennia of being ruled by men, Rome was Monday under new management.

When it comes to preparing for sea-level rise in coastal cities, the Dutch have a big head start on the rest of the world. And their best array of tools may be on display in and around the port city of Rotterdam.

As Iraqi forces drive ISIS out of Fallujah, thousands of civilians have finally been able to escape. But the camps they are arriving at, in 120-degree heat, are "nightmarish." Some people are even dying in them.

Germany has received more than 1 million refugees, many of them children from Syria. In “Everything Will Be Alright,” Kirsten Boie writes the story of one Syrian family that fled bombings in Homs for safety near Hamburg, Germany.

Juan Felipe Herrera's poem on America, post-Charleston and post-Orlando. "We shall not forget U Orlando," he writes.

Istanbul authorities said on Friday they had banned the annual gay pride parade set for June 26 to "safeguard security and public order" after a string of bombings around Turkey over the past year, some of them blamed on the Islamic State group, others claimed by Kurdish militants.

Learn how to make solar ovens, water rockets, and other DIY summer science projects

New York fashion week started during one of the world's darkest hours.

“The reason we don't understand [animals] better is because we're not smart enough.”

Why national parks are especially important in light of climate change.

These field microbiologists have discovered a species of life form that consumes iron.

A study says 98 percent of crimes in Mexico go unsolved. The nation is changing its justice system to try to change that.

This mountain lion trekked over 2,000 miles from South Dakota to just outside New York City. An author, using DNA and witness accounts, meticulously tracked its improbable journey.

American travel and food writer Zora O'Neill studied Arabic for seven years when she was younger. In 2011, post-Arab Spring, she traveled the Arab world to learn how the language is spoken by people as different from one another as Moroccans and Emiratis. Her new book, "All Strangers are Kin," is a travel memoir held together by her passion for the language.

Trump's spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, has said Trump was referring to Iraqi soldiers, not US soldiers. But US veterans are not happy.

Russian athletes cannot compete in track and field events in Rio this summer. But when you look closely at the ban, it really shows the agency tasked with keeping the Olympics clean isn't doing its job.

When is a tree not a tree? When it’s a coconut palm in the Indian state of Goa.

Danae Elon’s famous Israeli father didn’t want her to move back to the Jewish State. But she did it anyway, with her own family. Elon’s documentary is a deeply personal story about home and heartbreak in Jerusalem.

Pomp? Circumstance? It's actually a fiercely patriotic British song.

Proposals in the US House and Senate would enable the government to prohibit people on terrorist watch-lists from buying guns — and they'd also allow for universal background checks.

Since the Utoya massacre almost five years ago, there have been no mass shootings in Norway.

Khaled Almaghafi is a bee master in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's spiritual work, too. "You see how they dance, how they collect the honey, how they work ... you feel deep inside there is a creator," he says.

It's more than fun and games. President Barack Obama said the park “captures the promise” of the bilateral relationship between the US and China.

Dago Bailón was born in Mexico and crossed the border to the US when he was a kid. He lived in the US illegally for years until a law passed by President Obama allowed him to stay. After that, he had to go through another form of coming out: coming out of the closet.

Bhutan had a serious street dog problem that was turning off high-end tourists and spreading rabies. So the Buddhist kingdom did something no other country in the world has done: carried out a nationwide spay/neuter and vaccine program.

The Puerto Rican government says it can’t pay back the debt it owes and keep vital government services fully functioning. But some services are already being hampered, and have been for a while.

Oil fuels your car, heats your home. It's in toys, cosmetics, some clothes, most plastics. But it too often comes from places where people are suffering or indirectly funding terror. What can you do? An author has some ideas.

There were armed, off-duty police officers and bouncers at Pulse when an assailant carried out the worst mass shooting in modern American history, but there were no metal detectors, and the bouncers weren't checking bags or patting people down, according to eyewitnesses.

The indie-rock band Mashrou' Leila is perhaps the only high-profile Middle Eastern musical group with an openly gay lead singer.

"Visibility is a very powerful weapon in these discussions. It's basically a performance of oneself. That is one of the most powerful things you can do, being proud of yourself and achieving visibility."

Puerto Rico is a tough place to be gay. Homophobia is strong. LGBT islanders used to think Florida was a place where they could live openly. But after the Orlando shooting, they're not so sure any space is safe.

The people of Britain vote next week on whether to remain in the European Union or leave. But who exactly can vote?

Congress is working on a bill to address the island’s fiscal crisis. Many Puerto Ricans think the proposal is unfair.

A series of doping scandals involving Russian athletes has led to calls for an outright ban against the entire Russian Olympic squad. Now Russian athletes are waiting to find out whether they're going to have to sit this one out.

An urban-dwelling business executive is just as likely to "pull the trigger" on a deal as a deer hunter is to pull the actual trigger on his rifle in the wilds of New Hampshire.

Welcome to Transfit, part of the booming industry that has emerged to serve trans men and gay women in Thailand.

An innovative company is trying to recycle old guns into designer watches — and they're having some success.

“Violence is your constant companion if you are LGBT in Russia,” says Russian American writer and LGBT rights activist Masha Gessen.

“We should pray to God to help American society so that this stops happening,” says a favela resident in Brazil, a country with almost seven times more homicides per capita than the United States.

In the UK, it's the norm for school children to wear uniforms. In most schools, that means girls in skirts and boys in pants. If you don't fit into one of these traditional gender categories... too bad. But things may be starting to change.

The assailant encouraged other Muslims to attack "police, journalists, public figures, prison guards and rappers" and listed around a dozen well-known figures by name.

Many of the victims of this weekend's shooting in Orlando were Latinos within the LGBTQ community.

The past two days have been exceptionally hard for Shawn Ahmed, a gay Muslim in Toronto. It's also a moment that could potentially bring about tolerance.

Advocates in Orlando hope tragedy can lead to healing of divisions, for Latinos and for the nation.

President Obama has called the attack at Pulse nightclub in Orlando both a hate crime and terrorism. Experts' opinions differ.

The FDA in December switched from an outright ban on gay men giving blood to a year-long "waiting period" after a man has sex with a man. After "double tragedy" of Orlando, critics say that's not good enough.

A vigil outside an iconic place in America's gay rights movement had extraordinary resonance — and the shiver of history.

As news of the tragedy in Orlando spread, vigils sprung up in cities all around world. Here are photos from many countries showing people standing in solidarity with the fallen in Orlando.